How to use soft delete in Laravel 5?

Normally, we remove row from database when delete record from site. But laravel 5 introduce SoftDeletes in models that way we can't remove from database but if remove record from front side then it doesn't show record on front. So we can retrieve record from database if we remove wrong row.

How work soft delete, laravel add deleted_at column on the table that be default will be null and when we remove then it will place current timestamp, Laravel Model always fetch that record have only deleted_at = null.

So, how to use in our project, so first when you create table moigration then you have to add softDeletes(). you can see like bellow example of migration.

Migration Example:

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreateItemsTable extends Migration

{

/**

* Run the migrations.

*

* @return void

*/

public function up()

{

Schema::create('items', function(Blueprint $table) {

$table->increments('id');

$table->string('title');

$table->text('description');

$table->softDeletes();

$table->timestamps();

});

}

/**

* Reverse the migrations.

*

* @return void

*/

public function down()

{

Schema::drop("items");

}

}

Ok, now you can find deleted_at column in your items table and you have also model should look like as bellow:

Items Model

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class Item extends Model

{

use SoftDeletes;

public $fillable = ['title','description'];

/**

* The attributes that should be mutated to dates.

*

* @var array

*/

protected $dates = ['deleted_at'];

}

Now, you can use Item model as normally like you use before, you get all record like this way.

$data = Item::get();

It will return all record that have deleted_at = null only and you can also remove record like this way: